qsymmachus

The end result is Google is getting it wrong, we just have two layers of machine slop at work

Yep, but for ideological reasons they reversed it.

USPS purchased the usps.com domain a long time ago specifically so they could control it and prevent phishing. The decision to replace usps.gov with the .com domain came later, with the tenure of Trump appointee Louis DeJoy.

Right wingers believe that USPS should operate as a business, not a public service, so "rebranding" their website to be .com is definitely a part of that narrative.

I think we're getting ahead of ourselves as an industry if we think the ability to generate a convincing B- history essay from a prompt presages the enslavement of the human race

Oberlin native here. I've been going to Gibson's since I was a kid. You're getting an incomplete picture of this sad drama and the Gibson family does not deserve your sympathy.

I'll preface by saying that no one in this story comes out looking good – certainly not the shoplifters, who expected get out of jail free cards despite being thieves; nor the college, whose greatest fear is offending its fragile student body, with predictable results like this.

What you're not going to read in this article or others like it is that the Gibsons aren't heroes either. There are two important details I'd bring to your attention:

1. Allyn Gibson, the man who tackled the shoplifters, really is a confirmed racist. I know this both first hand (we are peers), and from his many social media posts in which he casually rags on immigrants and black people (expect he identifies them using the n-word). The judge in this case declared that evidence inadmissible, for some reason.

2. The Gibsons are not a put-down, working class family who were nearly bankrupted by this protest. They're one of the wealthiest families in town, and were millionaires before this all happened. Gibson's Bakery is a hobby business; they turn a modest profit selling some baked goods and beer. Their actual livelihood comes from rent – they're the second largest landowners after the college, and own most of the commercial and residential rental property in town. The idea that they were impacted by this protest in any consequential way is frankly laughable to anyone who knows anything about them and their business. Once again, the judge declared evidence of their wealth to be inadmissible in court.

This doesn't absolve the college of blame. But this isn't the black-and-white, "David vs Goliath" story the media is making it out to be. Unfortunately this story just fits too neatly into a national narrative about "woke" politics going too far, so you're not going to see any nuance from the media.